


Easy Being You

by ImprobableDreams900



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bodyswap, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Crowley and Aziraphale argue that the other's supernatural species has it easier, they end up getting a firsthand chance to see the greenness of the grass on the other side of the fence--by swapping bodies.</p><p>Featuring Crowley, the jumper-wearing angel of forgiveness, and Aziraphale, the shady sunglassed demon of temptation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easy Being You

**Author's Note:**

> This went in so many fun directions, thanks to my sister doctortreklock for keeping me on track!

“Oh come now, it can’t be all that hard.”

Aziraphale and Crowley were sitting at their regular table at a fancy restaurant in the south of France, both fresh from their respective fronts.

“I mean,” Aziraphale continued, picking up his wine glass delicately, “you’re a demon. All you do is corrupt people. There’s a thousand ways to corrupt the human soul, and only a handful of ways to keep it pure.”

Crowley gave him a look over his sunglasses that would have curdled milk. “Are you serious? Credit where credit is due, my friend—your side has done all right for itself: some of these human buggers are hard to corrupt. Besides, demons work a lot harder than your lot does—all you do is flounce around and throw flowers in the air.”

“I don’t think you fully appreciate the work I do,” Aziraphale said stiffly. “And I wouldn’t expect you to. You are a demon, after all.”

“Hey now, don’t get your harp strings in a knot. All I’m saying is that you lot have it soft. You sit up on your clouds and polish your halos. Us downstairs always have the threat of eternal damnation hanging over us. Not fun, eternal damnation.”

Aziraphale gave him another skeptical look, one eyebrow raised. “Well, I’ve got superiors too, as you very well know.”

Crowley snorted. “But what are they going to do? Pray you to death?”

Aziraphale gave the demon an icy stare. Crowley, oblivious, took a long drink of wine.

“I mean, really. A demon’s job is twelve times harder than an angel’s.”

Aziraphale abruptly stood up, knocking the table back a couple inches.

“Hey!” yelped Crowley as some of his wine spilled.

“I believe I have better things to do with my time than spend it here talking with you,” Aziraphale said coldly.

“Well then, so have I!” Crowley growled, standing up as well, wine forgotten. “Souls to corrupt,” he hissed.

“Souls to save,” Aziraphale retorted, grabbing his tan coat off the back of his chair and pulling it on over his jumper.

Crowley made a face as Aziraphale stormed off and vanished around the corner.

For a few moments Crowley remained standing, staring down anyone unfortunate enough to glance over. Then he snatched the wine glass off the table and drained it in one go. He hissed angrily at the glass, dropped it unceremoniously back on the white table cloth (beginning to stain red from the earlier incident), and departed the restaurant with all the grace of an angry rhinoceros.

 

***

Crowley returned to Hell at the end of the day for the yearly status meeting with the Dukes of Hell, Hastur and Ligur. He gave his report on the various evildoings he'd accomplished that year. Unsurprisingly, Hastur and Ligur were unimpressed. For Dukes, they were remarkably narrow-minded. Not for the first time, he bemoaned the fact that there was no option for promotion in the underworld.

After the meeting, since it was now night on the Earth above, Crowley decided to rest in Hell before returning to his London flat the following morning.

Quite by coincidence* Heaven held its annual status report meeting on the same day. Aziraphale reported his good deeds to the archangels Gabriel and Michael and was applauded for his out of the box thinking, but was chastised for focusing on saving individual people instead of helping out the enterprise as a whole.

After the meeting, night had fallen on Earth below, so Aziraphale decided to retire early to the section of clouds allotted to him in Heaven's fields.

 

*in fact, it wasn’t coincidence at all; the two meetings were fixed for the same date because during the meetings all supernatural beings were temporarily called home, and it was deemed to be a bad idea to let one side have free reign over the Earth for an afternoon, so there is in fact one afternoon every year where there is absolutely no celestial or fiendish interference in the lives of mankind

 

***

 

The first thing Crowley was aware of was the soft brush of cloud fluff against his cheek. He wasn't sleeping, exactly—it was difficult to sleep when not on the Earth's surface—but he had lulled himself into a nice restful trance. Now he heard a couple faint chords, lightly plucked strings rising and falling in harmony—

Crowley opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bed covered with silk sheets, bits of cloud fluff rising from his pillow.

Crowley sat bolt upright and jumped out of the bed. He looked around wildly, patting himself down, trying to make sense of it all. He was in a small white room consisting entirely of two short walls sitting perpendicular to each other, tastefully decorated with gold and silver frames and curtains. The open sides of the room revealed a wide green field underneath an impossibly blue sky.

It couldn't be. It was impossible. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd been here, so many many years ago...Heaven.

Then his hands, still patting himself down as though to convince himself he was real, registered something odd. He was wearing something soft and thick. He looked down at himself and jumped. He may have yelped in surprise.

He was wearing a cream and turquoise jumper and unflattering khaki colored pants. He stared at his hands but they weren't his own. Not-his-hands hands flew to his face. No sunglasses.

Crowley ripped aside the curtains on the walls, finding behind one a gleaming gold and silver shield. He stared at his reflection in the curved metal. He was Aziraphale.

"I'll kill him," Crowley hissed at his reflection, his own voice sounding strange to his ears—high and decidedly posh. "I'll kill that angel."

 

Crowley stormed off along the edge of the green field. A couple happy souls played Frisbee on the sward, laughing and smiling. It turned Crowley's stomach. He was brought up short at the edge of the field by a sudden blaring of trumpets. A group of five or six angels were assembled on the edge of what appeared to be a white brick road, blaring on shining brass trumpets.

Crowley glared at them. There was an air of righteousness permeating this whole place, seeped into the shining silver walls and classical pedestals. It made him want to retch. Or take a very long bath. It prickled his skin—well, Aziraphale's skin. If this was some sort of joke, it wasn't very funny.

He hurried past the trumpet players, head down. He wanted out. He needed to find Aziraphale, shake some sense into him—Crowley stopped. If he was in Aziraphale's body, then where was Aziraphale? He retreated into his own mind, searching around for the angel. It was his own mind, as far as he could tell, and he could find no trace of Aziraphale lurking anywhere outside his memories. He had a sudden sinking feeling that maybe Aziraphale was dead—or worse, running around in his body. His eyes narrowed. That little prick.

"Greetings, Aziraphale!"

Crowley looked around hastily, snapped out of his reverie. An angel was walking towards him, three sets of white wings trailing behind him. Crowley glanced around wildly to see if there was any avenue of escape, but the angel closed in on him before he could scurry off and pretend he hadn't seen him.

The angel reached him and gave him a hearty handshake. Crowley knew he was an archangel because of the three sets of wings, but he didn't remember enough of his time in Heaven eons ago to recall any specific information about him.

"Greetings...er," said Crowley lamely.

Luckily the angel didn't notice his pause, instead clapping him heartily on the shoulder. "Great presentation yesterday. I know Michael didn't like it very much—he really loves to see the big picture—but I really admired your strategy. For someone so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you really know how to get things done. I think the Big Man would have approved."

"Thanks?" said Crowley uncertainly.

"Ever the modest one. You know, Aziraphale, I think you and I don't spend enough time together. You're always down on Earth getting things done, and that's great, but you can take breaks every now and then. You really don't have very many friends, you know."

Crowley pulled away. "Excuse me?" he said hotly. Even if Aziraphale had set this up, he wasn't about to let his friend get pushed around by some triple-winged douche. Maybe Aziraphale was too soft to stand up to this guy, but the demon Crowley wasn't about to be strong-armed by anyone.

"Really, Aziraphale. You don't spend hardly any time up here. You stand around by yourself, don't practice by the armory like everyone else--"

"For your information, I have plenty of friends. Much better ones than the likes of _you_."

The angel pulled away, startled.

Crowley stood his ground. "And I don't see how it's any of your business what I do off duty. Just because you lot sit up here and groom your wings and stare into mirrors doesn't mean the rest of us have to! And I wouldn't consider myself unimportant in the grand scheme of anything, and you're the last person I need to prove that to!"

The angel's face darkened. He drew himself up, and it seemed even the air zapped with a little more righteousness. "What did you say?" he said quietly. His three sets of wings bristled.

"I said, if you need your ears cleaned you'd better get some doe-eyed cupid to do it, because there isn't a hellhound in all the world brave enough to approach that wax!"

Crowley realized too late his mistake. The angel lunged forward, trying to grab his wrist, but Crowley had already ducked around him.

"Aziraphale!" came the angry cry from behind him. Crowley ran for it.

He followed the white brick road, sneakers slapping hard against the stone, worried that if he left the path he'd be lost indefinitely. More angels appeared on the road, and he dodged between them, ignoring their protests and cries of annoyance. They all seemed to be moving towards a single focal point. He followed their lead, but didn’t slow his pace, afraid the archangel would catch up and exact vengeance.

Crowley came over the crest of a hill, wings streaming behind him, and saw that the road joined with two others at two shining golden gates that stood wide open.

He allowed himself to slow, planning on melding into the crowd. A row of angelic guards in silver armor stood along the road. The nearest one saw him looking guiltily over his shoulder, and approached as Crowley fell into a walk. Crowley’s eyes drifted nervously to the hilt of the guard’s sword, imagining the flames so often directed at others of his kind.

“Brother, is something the matter?”

Crowley stopped and tried for a reassuring smile. “No—er, _certainly not_ ,” he said, in his most straight-laced voice. He tried for a holier-than-thou expression, quirking his eyebrows in his best imitation of righteousness embodied.

The guard gave him a look that said he was wondering if Crowley was having a seizure. “Are you all right, brother?”

Crowley sighed, dropped the expression, and gave the guard the most reassuring, least threatening smile in his arsenal. “Quite right, er, sir.” He patted the guard on his breastplate, and when the guard gave him another strange look, nervously retracted his hand.

“Er, I’ll just be on my way then.” Crowley carefully edged away from the guard, glancing back over his shoulder to see if he was following. He wasn’t, but he was still staring at Crowley as though he’d sprouted two heads.

Luckily, it seemed the archangel Crowley had insulted hadn’t given chase, and he managed to reach the golden gates without any further incident. He resisted the urge to gawk up at the shining spires as he passed underneath, instead fixing his eyes firmly on the ground and trying to make himself appear as unremarkable as possible.

Once he’d passed under the gates, the crowd started dispersing. Angels stepped off to the edges of clouds, wings unfurling. Crowley followed two female angels along the edge of the path. One glanced back and met Crowley’s eye.

Crowley smiled broadly and winked seductively in her direction. Her face soured and she turned back to her companion.

Crowley frowned. He’d forgotten he was still wearing Aziraphale—no wonder he couldn’t pick up any girls, the angel had the sex appeal of a wet sheep.

Once the two female angels had taken flight, he stepped up to the edge, unfurling his wings. Immediately he noted that they _weren’t_ his wings. Walking around in Aziraphale’s skin wasn’t so bad—they were about the same height and compensating for the angel’s plumpness wasn’t a big deal—but wings were another thing entirely. Their size, length, and heft were all vital to flight. It was like wearing someone else’s shoes—except if you fell there’d be a lot more distance to the ground. He also noted with distaste the unkemptness of the angel’s wings; what with all the loose feathers bursting out at awkward angles, it was like he’d been pushed out of his vintage Bentley into an old beat-up pickup someone had stored outdoors for a decade and then crashed into a tree. Twice.

He flexed Aziraphale’s wings a couple times, trying to get the feel of them, and then shrugged to himself. If anything happened, it was Aziraphale’s body, after all, so what did he care? Speaking of Aziraphale, that was where he was heading next. If that angel had pulled a fast one and was responsible for this, he’d have some major explaining to do. But if he was in the same boat as Crowley, he knew the angel would try to meet him at the last place they had been together:  the French restaurant.

He pictured Aziraphale in his body, kicking back on some tropical island or, worse still, Aziraphale sneaking around in Hell, ruining all his carefully laid plans. He narrowed his eyes. The angel had better wish he showed up at the restaurant on time.

Crowley extended Aziraphale’s wings and stepped off the edge of the path.

 

***

 

Aziraphale was terrified. He was sitting alone on a rock surrounded by darkness. Low moans seemed to seep through the dark rock all around him, punctuated by occasional screams.

He had woken abruptly several minutes before to the sound of some poor soul being dragged past, screaming and rattling his chains, begging for mercy.

At first he had thought it was some sort of terrible nightmare, or a hallucination, as he vividly recalled lying down in Heaven mere hours before. He sat on the dark rock, knees pulled up to his chin, arms around his knees, rocking back and forth very slowly and trying very hard to ignore the sticky dampness of the rock beneath him.

After several minutes he found the strength to stand and inch around the cramped space. It contained little more than the foul-smelling rock, which sat opposite a wide fissure glowing with red light.

Aziraphale cautiously approached the fissure and peered out. It opened up into some sort of hallway, lit every ten feet or so with a wrought iron torch. Aziraphale stepped back into the tiny room and slammed his back against the wall. The full realization of what was happening crashed down on him. He was in Hell. He was an angel, and he was in Hell.

He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. There was simply no way he could be here—he was an _angel_. He was immortal. And if he’d somehow been kidnapped, he would be in chains. He raised a hand to his forehead, and noticed that his sleeve was black.

Aziraphale frowned. He flexed his hand in front of him. It was pale and thin and wrapped in a fine pinstripe fabric. He glanced down at himself, doing his best to squint through the darkness. He was wearing a fine suit, complete with tie—the type of suit Crowley wore.

Crowley.

“Bugger!” Aziraphale swore, checking over his hands, feet, and wings—black wings with long glossy feathers. There was no mirror in sight, but he felt his hair and the sunglasses on his nose, and stared again at the distinctive striped tie around his neck, and he knew without a doubt that he was Crowley. How that demon had managed it, he didn’t know, but he’d be buggered if he was going to sit here and let him get away with it. The logical assumption was that he and Crowley had swapped bodies somehow, and thus the demon had bought himself a one-way ticket into Heaven.

Aziraphale quietly fumed to himself, picturing the different ways he would bring that double-crossing demon to justice. But then he stopped himself. This was _Crowley_ , after all. A demon he was, but a traitor he was not. He felt certain that, though Crowley would have crossed every human, demon, and angel he met if it would have helped him gain an inch, he would not have crossed _him_ , partly because of the Arrangement and partly because it was just not in Crowley to alienate the only ally he had. He’d drunk enough wine with that demon to know that no matter how much Crowley hated him at the present moment, he wouldn’t have sold him out and trapped him in Hell if he could have avoided it.

Which meant either Crowley was in trouble or something else was going on here.

Aziraphale was pulled out of his musings by the sharp slap of a hand on rock and a voice that barked like a dog: “Crowley!”

Aziraphale started, staring at the new arrival, a broadly-built demon with three missing teeth in his dirty smile and his own personal odor.

Aziraphale waited for the demon to continue, but he didn’t, so he offered a timid, “Yes?”

“Been looking for you, Croooowley,” the demon continued, drawing out Crowley’s name like a slinky.

“Well, then, you’ve found me now, haven’t you?” Aziraphale said, pulling down on the bottom of Crowley’s suit jacket.

The demon squinted at him and tilted his head.

“Well?” Aziraphale asked politely after a moment. “What was it you wanted me for?”

Too late he realized his demeanor was all wrong—Crowley was a demon, after all, which meant he had to pull himself off as one. He lowered his voice and his chin, adopting an authoritative tone. “Get on with it then, you fool.”

The demon nodded hastily. “Master Hastur wanted to see you, sir.”

Aziraphale nodded briskly and turned away. The demon made no move to leave.

Aziraphale slowly pivoted back to face him. “Well?” he demanded, drawing himself up to Crowley’s full height.

“Will you be coming then, sir?”

Aziraphale realized with a sinking feeling that there was no way he could sneak off now. And, he supposed, even if he could, he didn’t know the way out. He had never been to Hell before, and had never had the slightest interest in going there for any reason.

“Yes, then, of course,” Aziraphale sighed, gesturing towards the corridor. “Lead on.”

The demon gave him another strange look, and Aziraphale hastily added an ominous _hissss_ , which seemed to satisfy him.

The demon led Aziraphale through a series of twisting rock corridors. The screams of the damned rose and fell as they passed juncture after juncture, and the more they walked the more Aziraphale felt like he had fallen into the lion’s den. Surely someone would recognize that he was not made of the same stuff as them?

After a couple of worrying minutes, the demon stopped outside a set of tall double doors. They were wood, but heavy and solid and crisscrossed with dozens of wrought-iron bands and spikes. The wood itself was dark and far redder than it ought to be, and Aziraphale noticed with a shiver a couple skulls and ribs still caught on the spikes.

The demon opened the door, which screeched in protest like a banshee. Aziraphale couldn’t help but cower and cover his ears, but luckily the demon was facing the other way and didn’t notice. By the time he’d looked back, Aziraphale was standing as casually as he could, inspecting Crowley’s nails detachedly.

If he wanted to get out of this alive, he’d have to be a very convincing demon.

“My lord Hastur will see you now,” the demon hissed.

Aziraphale nodded brusquely and stepped forward.

The room beyond the doors was terrifying. It was a huge hall, stretching as far as the angel could see, though not too far away sat a throne. The walls on either side were piled with decaying bodies, some of which were still moaning. The throne itself was bleach white and made of bones: skulls and femurs and the tiny delicate bones of the hand. The floor was impossibly smooth and glassy and a very deep red. The air was thick and hot and smelled like blood.

Aziraphale’s first reaction was to gag, his second was to run, and his third was to smite.

Instead he inhaled sharply, trying not to breathe, and stepped forward.

Hastur lazed on the throne of bones, picking his teeth with the jagged end of some sort of bone Aziraphale did not care to inspect further.

He didn’t think he could muster a tone of voice stronger than a squeak, so he stayed silent, hoping Crowley’s sunglasses would hide the absolute terror in his eyes. He focused on keeping his tremors to a minimum.

“Crowley,” said Hastur. It was a statement, so again Aziraphale kept his silence.

“Your presentation yesterday was…unusual.” His tone of voice indicated that it was not the nice kind of unusual.

“There is simply no point in corrupting everyone a little when you can corrupt someone a lot.”

 _“Help usss pleassseee.”_ That was one of the moaning bodies off to the side.

“You see, when you can corrupt a single soul, it’s elegant—”

_“Noooooooo.”_

“—certain symmetry—”

__“_ I’m sorrryyyyy, pleaseeeeee…”_

“—served us well in the past—”

_“Save usssss….”_

“—don’t you agree?”

Aziraphale noticed guiltily that Hastur had stopped talking, and was looking at him expectantly. He was going to have to say something. He had to.

He cleared his throat, the sound tiny in the huge room.

“Well,” he began in a squeak, and stopped to clear his throat again. Hastur stared at him.

“Well,” he began again, racking his brains for something to say. What did demons say? Insults were common fare. “It seems to me that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Hastur’s eyes widened and he sat forward on his throne. A couple of bones clattered farther down the pile, and Aziraphale followed them nervously with his eyes.

“It seems to me, er, kind sir,” he continued awkwardly, shifting his weight from foot to foot to try to take his mind off the fact that he was trapped in the center of Hell in a hall full of tortured souls, “that this is all just a…misunderstanding. Yes! A misunderstanding.” He beamed. Hastur stared at him. Aziraphale’s smile faltered. “Er. You see, I understand that you don’t, um, necessarily agree with me, per say, but because we are both, er, kin of Lucifer—hail Satan!—hehe, um, that we should be allowed to…um…have our own separate opinions because…um…a free world and all that. Yeah.”

Hastur stared at him, and Aziraphale counted five tense Mississippis before he leaned back in his throne and laughed. It was a huge, terrifying laugh that made all the moaning bodies piled around the room whine in fear.

Aziraphale stood awkwardly, trying to fight down his rising nausea as Hastur continued his spine-chilling laugh. He finally chuckled himself into silence and leaned forward, bones crunching under his weight. “You always were a joker, Crowley. But really—do we have an understanding?”

Aziraphale nodded hastily. “Yes, yes, er. Of course.”

Hastur nodded in satisfaction and sat back again. “Free world. Heh,” he chuckled to himself, and waved dismissively at Aziraphale to leave.

The angel let out a huge sigh of relief, turned on heel, and marched out of the hall maybe a little too briskly.

The demon who had led him there was gone, so Aziraphale just kept walking. He didn’t know where the exit was, but he knew he wanted to get as far from that horrible hall as he could. He tried to follow the freshest air, and felt like he was climbing out of a volcano. He kept his eyes straight ahead and locked his jaw, pushing the rising panic down inside of him. He wanted out, and he wanted out _now._

He rounded a corner and his pace faltered. The stone path continued forward, but on one side the wall fell away to reveal a huge pit filled with fire. The flames laughed and flickered and wreathed around hundreds of blackened writhing figures. Aziraphale stood frozen to the spot, horrified. Their screams were raspy and high and their voices were hoarse from use. He felt the angel in him shrink into a tiny ball somewhere in his middle. If he were discovered, surely this would be his fate. He looked out over the squirming bodies and felt the sheer terror of their souls vibrating into his very being, a thousand crying souls lost in the wilderness. A single tear slipped down his cheek.

“Crowley!”

Aziraphale took a shaky breath and hastily wiped the tear away before he turned to face this new threat.

It was another demon, this one short and balding. Two more demons trailed behind him, one a scrawny youth and the other an angry-looking young woman with eyes like flint.

“Yes?” Aziraphale said stiffly in his most sinister voice. _Act like Crowley_ , he thought to himself hastily. _Do what he would do_.

The balding demon came to a stop and dropped to his knees. Aziraphale stared at him. The demon fell onto his hands and knees and started groveling at the angel’s feet. The other two followed suit. They stayed with their heads to the ground, motionless.

“Er,” said Aziraphale. “You may stand up.”

They did so, brushing themselves down. They didn’t act like anything was amiss.

They stared at him expectantly. “Er,” he said.

“What would you like us to do?” said the balding one.

“Are there souls to skin?” suggested the woman with all the tenderness of a blender.

“Humans to tempt,” offered the youth.

“Innocents to bleed,” said the woman again, her eyes taking on a dreamy look.

“Angels to—” began the youth.

“No no no!” said Aziraphale loudly. They fell silent. “Nothing like that, um. How about…um…here then, how about you take the day off?”

They stared at him.

“What?” said the youth.

“Well, I’m sure you all, um, work very hard. And…yes!...yes, I think you three ought to have some, um, time off.”

“Mr. Crowley sir, are you feeling all right?” asked the balding one, giving him a suspicious look.

“Yes, I’m feeling very well, thank you.” Aziraphale gave him his haughtiest look. “Now, if you, um, would excuse me, I’ve got, um, things to be doing.” He pushed past the balding demon and walked quickly along the edge of the pit. As soon as he was out of their view, he broke into a run. He could feel the walls closing in around him, feel the hot air pressing on him, searching for a flaw in his disguise, searching for the angel in their midst.

The demons he flew past shouted insults at him, swearing like sailors. Aziraphale slowed to a halt, breathing heavily. Nearby, a demon was leaning against the wall, sharpening his fingernails into points using a large curved blade.

Aziraphale marched up to him, knocked the blade from his hands, and grabbed him by the lapels.

“Hey, hey, hey!” the demon squawked, but made no move to stop him. Evidently Aziraphale had been correct in assuming he was pretty low down the food chain.

“Where’s the exit?” Aziraphale hissed. “Where’s the door?”

“Hey, what, man?” said the demon, squinting at him.

“The door, the door to Hell, where is it?”

The demon gestured halfheartedly in the direction Aziraphale had been going. “That way, man. Everybody knows that. You lost or somethin’?”

Aziraphale let go of his lapels and took a deep breath. “How far?”

“Just a couple more corridors, man. You new or somethin’?”

Aziraphale gave him a look that would have made Crowley proud. “Or something,” he said darkly.

He marched off down the corridor, imagining all the unpleasant things he would do to Crowley if he was behind this. He may be an angel, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of vengeance.

Luckily, the demon hadn’t lied and after a couple more turns the corridor let out onto a tall path leading up to a gate made of iron and flames. Aziraphale stared, horrified yet again, at the path. It was made of bodies twisted into grotesque positions. Most of them wore suits, and all of them were frozen into some sort of sadistic ice slide. He saw a couple demons nearby start ascending via a small service staircase beside the frozen salesmen, and followed suit.

As he walked, he said small prayers in his head for the frozen salesmen and the poor creatures trapped below in the pit of fire.

As he approached the wretched gates, he saw the brightness of sky above him. His heart fluttered in his chest. He was going to make it. He resisted the urge to push forward past the other demons, instead waiting patiently as they climbed out of the gates first.

Aziraphale stood at the edge of the gates of Hell and took a long deep breath of fresh air, trying to shake the cloying heat of the caves off him. He took a couple hesitant steps and then stopped again. He couldn’t go to Heaven to get this sorted out, not with him looking like Crowley. They’d smite him a league away. No, his best bet was to try to find Crowley. If this hadn’t been intentional, maybe he would be trying to meet him too. They had a longstanding agreement that if they ever got separated and in really bad trouble, they should meet each other at the place they’d last seen each other—the nice French restaurant, in this case.

Aziraphale glanced around him. He didn’t recognize his surroundings, but he could guess it wasn’t France. He’d need to move quickly to try to meet Crowley as soon as possible, so ordinary transportation wasn’t in the cards.

He flexed Crowley’s wings, lighter than his and slimmer. The weight distribution was all off, but it’d have to do. He’d have to be careful to avoid the usual angel thoroughfares as well, if he had any intentions of making it to France alive.

And he had every intention of finding Crowley and getting this all sorted before some hellhounds realized he didn’t smell quite right.

 

***

 

Crowley’s feet slammed too hard onto the ground, forcing him onto his knees. He was shaking as he carefully tucked Aziraphale’s cumbersome wings into the usual pocket of extradimensional space where they normally resided. He staggered onto his feet, brushing Aziraphale’s coat off as he searched for his sea legs. The flight had been awful—Aziraphale’s wings were far too heavy, and rode the wind in a way completely alien to him. His back ached with the effort of having kept himself aloft. And then when he’d come into France, dropping altitude and shielding himself from human eyes with a quick spell, he’d dropped far too quickly. It’d seemed impossible to get himself to hover with the angel’s wings, and when he’d dropped into a dive he’d fallen far faster than he’d expected. He’d barely managed to force his wings open in time to keep himself from impacting with the roof of the restaurant.

He composed himself, trying to calm the tremors in his legs, and smoothed back Aziraphale’s hair with his hand. Adopting a calm expression, he carefully walked around the edge of the patio that ringed the restaurant, looking for the table he and Aziraphale usually shared. He’d barely rounded the corner when someone grabbed him by the shoulder and slammed him back around the corner and against the wall.

“Hey—” he began, and then broke off.

He was staring at himself. Dark hair, elegant cheekbones, mirrored sunglasses, handsome features—yes, it was him. But not him.

“Crowley,” growled Crowley-not-Crowley.

“Aziraphale?” queried Crowley.

“Who do you think?” Aziraphale snarled.

Crowley had rarely seen the angel angry, and it looked even worse on Crowley’s face. His eyes were glowing bright yellow behind the sunglasses, and the air about him seemed to crackle.

“Well, hands off, then,” Crowley hissed in Aziraphale’s voice, the noise sounding strange even to his own ears. Aziraphale seemed to decide something in his mind and slowly released the demon.

“I don’t know what you did, but change it back,” Aziraphale growled.

“What _I_ did?” Crowley asked. “More like what _you_ did. Why would I want to be an angel? Load of incompetent pansies with flowers sprouting out of their britches.”

“Those are my brothers you’re talking about,” Aziraphale said coldly.

“Fine, then; _moderately_ competent pansies.”

“Listen, I don’t care why you did it, just switch us back.”

“Aren’t you paying attention? _I_ didn’t do anything. Last thing I remember, I’m kicking back in Hell, and then all of a sudden I’m trapped up in Wonderland with a load of halos hot on my tail—”

“Hot on your—oh no. Crowley, _what did you do?_ ”

“Hmm?”

Aziraphale took a step back and ran a hand down his face, a motion Crowley found strangely fascinating, seeing his own hand moving around of someone else’s accord.

“Who’d you talk to, Crowley? How many trials am I going to have to complete before I can get back in?”

“Oh, just this one bloke—six wings, had an overinflated sense of his own importance.”

Aziraphale groaned and rubbed his eyes under Crowley’s sunglasses. “Gabriel. Or Michael. You couldn’t have found a more important angel to tick off, could you?”

“Well,” Crowley began.

“They’re my friends, Crowley. And my superiors. Ohhh, I’m so buggered.”

“They didn’t seem like very good friends to me,” Crowley offered as Aziraphale dropped into a nearby chair and put his head in his hands. “And it seemed to me he needed to show a little more respect—”

Aziraphale’s head shook back and forth in his hands.

Crowley sat down in the chair opposite. “Look, I’m sorry I got you in a spot of trouble, but we’ve got to switch back. I don’t want to be an angel. And I’ve got things I need to do, you know? Hell doesn’t run itself.”

Aziraphale looked up at him, and his expression was decidedly guilty.

“Oh no,” Crowley said. “You were in Hell, weren’t you…what did you do?”

Aziraphale looked away unconvincingly and scratched the back of his neck. “Er, I may have, um, talked to your boss.”

“Hastur?” Crowley asked. “What did he want?”

“Er,” said Aziraphale again. “I don’t quite—”

“You didn’t agree to anything, did you?”

“Er.”

Crowley swore, an appalling string of obscenities in several dead languages that made Aziraphale’s ears sting to hear spoken in his own voice.

“So,” Aziraphale offered timidly once he’d finished, “you’re saying that you didn’t do this? Switch us?”

Crowley shook his head.

“And I didn’t do this,” Aziraphale continued, “so who did? And why?”

At that moment a waiter came up, a white towel draped across his arm. “Sirs,” he said.

“Not now,” Crowley said, waving him away.

The waiter didn’t move.

Crowley looked up at him and gave him a tight smile that looked far too wrong on Aziraphale’s face. “Well?”

“Sirs,” the waiter said, “it seems to me that you both got what you wanted. A chance to prove to yourself that the grass is greener on the other side.”

“Who are you?” Crowley asked suspiciously.

“No one important,” said the waiter noncommittally. “But you’ve got the chance to see the grass up close and personal, no strings attached, 24 hours.”

Aziraphale studied the waiter carefully, but could deduce nothing about him.

“Now, sirs, could I recommend the escargot?” the waiter continued smoothly. “It is really quite excellent.”

Crowley exchanged glances with Aziraphale, but when the two of them looked back, the waiter had vanished.

“Well, that wasn’t weird,” Crowley growled.

Aziraphale looked thoughtful. “It would seem he is correct, though.”

“How so?”

“He knew what was up with us, for one thing. Knew more than we know, that’s for sure.”

“What, you want to listen to this guy?” Crowley stared at him incredulously. “Oh, I know what this is, it’s all part of that ineffable plan, isn’t it?”

“Think about it, though. Just the other day, I was saying how easy it must be to be a demon, and you said the same about being an angel.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Maybe this is some sort of…I don’t know…weird test thing. We wanted to see how the other half lived, and I guess we’ve got the chance now.”

“You aren’t seriously suggesting we go along with that lunatic?”

“Think about it. One day. It can’t be that hard, can it? You do good things, I’ll do, um, bad things—”

“—yeah right—”

“—and then maybe we’ll swap back. It’s our best bet. And if it doesn’t work, _then_ we’ll go find someone who can help us figure this out. Besides, if we just hang around twiddling our thumbs, Heaven and Hell will undoubtedly notice and think something’s up. If they find out who we really are, Heaven will smite you and Hell will lynch me.”

Crowley still looked unconvinced. “You got a better plan?” Aziraphale huffed.

The demon sighed and sat back in his chair. “Fine! Fine. One idiot plan, check.”

“Come on, I don’t like this any more than you,” Aziraphale said stiffly. “And I never intend to visit Hell again as long as I live.”

“Yeah, well, it’s an acquired taste,” Crowley said, standing up and pulling at the sleeves of Aziraphale’s coat. “How do you even wear this? It’s so uncomfortable. And I feel like a walking sheep.”

Aziraphale frowned as he stood up too. “Well, your suit is too tight,” he returned. “Oh, and your wings’ balance is all wrong.”

“ _My_ wings’ balance is wrong? Yours have all the aerodynamic grace of a flying penguin.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “Penguins don’t—”

Crowley sighed. “That’s the point. Well, let’s get this over with then. Go look at the grass, as it were. Oh, am I going to regret this.”

“Be careful what you wish for, that’s what I’ve learned,” Aziraphale grumbled. “I guess I’ll be seeing you later, then. Hopefully as yourself.”

“Right back at you. You really need to find a better body, this one’s a little…peculiar.”

“I like it,” Aziraphale said quietly. “So don’t jump off any buildings, okay?”

“Yeah, well, mind the cheekbones,” Crowley replied. “I’m quite fond of mine too.”

“I’ll treat it like my own. See you on the other side.”

“You’d better.”

 

***

 

Aziraphale walked along the edge of a park. He was humming cheerfully to himself as he looked around for nefarious deeds to commit. He had never given much thought to the daily sins of demons, but now that he was looking to commit some, he was having trouble coming up with any. He didn’t want to entice anyone to murder or any crime too large—he was still an angel, after all—but he didn’t think a couple small things would cause too much harm.

A group of children played in the park. Aziraphale considered kidnapping and decided that was going in the ‘more than just _looking_ at the color of the grass’ section and set it aside. A mother with a stroller stood nearby. The baby in the stroller was sucking on a large multicolored lollipop.

Aziraphale cocked his head.

_Just like stealing candy from a baby._

Low-level crime. He could do that.

The mother was still hovering nearby, so Aziraphale glanced over at the playground. A quick spurt of thought and one of the children tripped and started crying. Aziraphale felt a simultaneous rush of forbidden adrenaline and righteous guilt. He had to act like a demon, he reasoned to himself, for both his and Crowley’s sakes.

The mother hurried off to comfort the child on the playground and Aziraphale drifted closer to the stroller, trying his best to not look like an absolute creep. Crowley’s complexion, sunglasses, and wardrobe did little to combat this effect.

Aziraphale crept to the edge of the stroller and looked down. A baby, around two years old, looked up at him with wide blue eyes.

“Hello there,” Aziraphale said with a smile.

The baby smiled back at him. The lollipop was lax in its pudgy hand.

Aziraphale glanced around cautiously and then carefully reached into the stroller. The baby’s grip was tighter than he expected, and he had trouble prying the sweet out of its hand.

It saw what he was doing and started crying, its face scrunching up and turning red.

“Shh shhh,” Aziraphale whispered soothingly. “God bless you, child.” He managed to tug the lollipop free just as the mother turned back.

“Hey!” she said loudly.

“Bless you,” Aziraphale repeated, making the sign of the cross. Then he turned and ran, sticky lollipop clenched in his hand. Luckily the woman didn’t chase him past the edge of the park, and he fell into an easy trot once the playground was out of sight. He disposed of the sticky sweet in the nearest garbage can, carefully wrapping it in a piece of plastic already in the bin so it wouldn’t stick to the sides of the bin and cause the garbage men problems, and carried on down the road.

The angel walked until he reached the highway (he had decided against taking Crowley’s Bentley; even if he _was_ currently Crowley, he knew the demon would never forgive him for laying a finger on his precious car). The traffic whizzed by at a steady rate, two lanes moving in either direction.

Aziraphale stood by the edge of the road, watching them pass, and had another idea.

He waited until there was a lull in the traffic, and then conjured up a series of orange traffic cones and large signs with flashing arrows. When the next bout of cars came by, they screeched angrily as the drivers hit their brakes and tried to merge. Within minutes there was a traffic jam backed up ten cars long. Again Aziraphale felt the forbidden excitement, and hastily covered the feeling with guilt. He said a prayer for each of the people stuck in the traffic jam and then continued down the street.

 _This isn’t too bad,_ he thought to himself. _Being a demon’s not all that hard._

 

***

 

Crowley took a taxi into the city. He knew angels did good things, but not really any specifics. He knew they cared about saving souls, though, so he decided to find some souls to save.

He took the taxi to a busy city street and got out in the middle of the road. He walked to the sidewalk and took up a post near a crosswalk. As people came to a stop to wait for the light to change to cross the road, Crowley stepped forward.

“Sisters and, er, brothers,” Crowley proclaimed awkwardly. A couple people glanced over at him. A mother ushered her children behind her. “I’ve come to, um, forgive you.” He beamed at them.*

 

*When Crowley usually beamed at people they shrank back in fear, but he figured that, since he was currently wearing Aziraphale and he’d seen field mice more intimidating than the angel, maybe people would take more kindly to his smile. He was wrong.

 

“Everyone,” Crowley continued in a loud voice. “You are forgiven.” He turned to the person closest to him, a businessman holding a wrapped sandwich in one hand. “You, sir, are forgiven, by the, um, grace of God.” He beamed again. The man edged away. Crowley glared at him. “You’re forgiven, man, got that? For-giv-en. Lighten up, dammit.”

The demon turned to the next person in the crowd, a middle aged woman who looked like she wanted to smack him with her purse. “Woman, you are forgiven. Bless you.” He nearly choked on the words, but hey, if Aziraphale could do it, so could he. “Let the love and light of…well, etc. etc. you get the picture.”

Crowley blessed five different groups of people waiting at the traffic light before he grew bored of the exercise. There must be more interesting ways of saving people.

He frowned at the road just as he heard the distant wail of an emergency vehicle.

A light bulb lit up in Crowley’s mind.

Crowley strolled along the street until he found a midsize apartment complex. He stared at the fourth floor, and it started on fire. He beamed to himself as he heard the fire alarms go off.

Within minutes people were streaming out of the building, some cursing, others looking merely irritated. Crowley met them as they came out.

“Bless you! Bless you, sir, and you, madam, yes you, no madam I have a very good lineage actually, bless you sir, and you too, er, short ones. Give thanks for your lives, humans. Love and faith and blah blah to you all.”

After most of the people had exited, Crowley nodded at the building and the flames roared higher. He then dramatically rolled Aziraphale’s sleeves up and started towards the building. A few people behind him screamed at him to stop, but he strolled right in. The fire ignored him, instead clearing a path to the stairs and up. On the fifth floor he found an elderly woman coughing for help. He heroically blasted the door down with a wave of demonic magic and scooped her up, slinging her roughly over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Her cries of gratitude were soon replaced by hacking coughs as she impacted heavily with Crowley’s shoulder. He tromped downstairs with her and dumped her unceremoniously on her feet just outside the door. “No need to thank me,” he said flatly, and went back into the building to repeat the procedure with a man trapped on the eighth floor and a small dog he found in the stairwell. By the time he’d returned and duly blessed the cocker spaniel, the fire trucks had arrived. He left them to put out the blaze and walked calmly away from the destruction.

There. He’d saved a bunch of people. He was such a good angel. This wasn’t so bad; he didn’t know what Aziraphale was complaining about.

 

***

 

Aziraphale walked along the edge of the road, thinking of more nefarious deeds to do. He glanced over at the road just as a car swerved into a driveway. A group of women streamed out of the house and mobbed the car. Their voices drifted over to him.

“—so excited!”

 “—my daughter, getting married!”

“—think of that, then?”

Aziraphale drifted closer. All the women were in light pink dresses except two. One, presumably the bride, was in loose-fitting clothes, her hair pulled up into an extravagant bun. The other was an older woman with a turquoise suit jacket and a long gray skirt.

“Don’t forget the dress!” screeched another voice, this one coming from the last woman out of the house, who was toting a huge white box.

They all bundled into the car, which abruptly shifted into reverse and skidded out into the road.

Aziraphale followed it. Before it had a chance to turn off the road, Aziraphale stared at the tire and it burst and deflated.

He had about caught up by the time they were all swarming out of the car.

He was expecting a couple tears at least, but they refused to bend.

“And that, mother, is why we leave 45 minutes early,” said the bride in a no-nonsense voice. Soon the women were swarming all around the car, putting the hazards on, popping open the trunk, and pulling out the spare tire. They were the most industrious bridesmaids Aziraphale had ever seen, and in a matter of minutes they had jacked the car up and replaced the tire.

Aziraphale realized his little evil had done no damage whatsoever, so hastily drained the car of all its petrol. The engine coughed and died just as they got the wheel on. There was another cry, but then one of the bridesmaids ran back to the house of the bride and returned minutes later lugging a large red petrol container.

Aziraphale mentally called for a taxi from the commercial part of the city, and by the time it arrived the wedding party was about to depart. Aziraphale climbed into the taxi and bid the cabbie follow the bride’s car.

Outside the church Aziraphale watched them carefully leave the car and broke the heel of the shoe of the bridesmaid carrying the large white box. The woman stumbled and fell, the box falling open and sending the dress spilling onto the pavement. A second bridesmaid tripped on it trying to catch the elbow of the first bridesmaid, and both went down. The dress made a loud ripping sound.

Aziraphale watched them closely from across the street, feeling quite satisfied with himself. _See, Crowley?_ he thought to himself. _Being a demon? Easy peasy._

Moments later the bridesmaids’ conversation floated back to his ears.

“—ripped, see?”

“Mother, come take a look…”

“—not all that bad, a couple quick stitches, you’re lucky I brought my sewing kit—”

“—always great to have a professional tailor for a mother, eh?”

“What about your shoe, Marie?”

“…always did hate heels, didn’t you?”

Aziraphale watched in shock as the group of women hastened toward the church doors. They were about to go in when a catering van pulled up. One of the bridesmaids tapped the bride on the shoulder and they turned back. The two caterers climbed out of the front of the truck and went around to open the doors in the back. They soon began extracting a huge white wedding cake. Aziraphale’s eyes lit up.

One of the bridesmaids starting pointing and giving directions, and as they approached the front of the church, Aziraphale stared at the feet of one of the caterers and caused it to stumble.

The giant cake capsized suddenly, tipping completely off its base and crashing to the ground in a tiny avalanche of sugar and frosting.

This, Aziraphale felt confident, should ruin any bride’s day.

Much to his disbelief, the bride laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. And then she gathered all her bridesmaids around her and hugged them all and thanked the caterers and stood in front of the destroyed cake with the other women and took a video on someone’s phone. And then the bride and some of the bridesmaids were hustled inside and the rest remained to try to scrape the cake off the sidewalk, laughing all the while.

Aziraphale stood in shock.

 

***

 

Crowley didn’t see what the big fuss was about.

He’d located two brothers in a shopping mall who were having a shouting match, and had come over to spread his universal message of peace and harmony, et al.

“What are you arguing about?” Crowley asked innocently, strolling up like they were old friends of his.

They both broke off their argument to stare at him.

“And who the hell are you, then?” the shorter one barked.

“Not currently of Hell, sorry,” Crowley replied smoothly. “Working for the other side at the moment. Weird, I know.”

“What?” asked the short one.

“At any rate,” Crowley continued, moving between them. “I’m here to help. So talk to me. What’s your beef?”

“Not that it’s any of _your_ business,” said the shorter one, “but my idiot brother just bought the last medium _Shave the Whales_ shirt, when he knew full well I wanted one!”

Crowley squinted at him. “A what-a-what-now?”

“ _Shave the Whales_. It’s a stupid shirt, but the point is that he knew I wanted it!”

“Oh, come on!” the taller one shouted at him over Crowley’s shoulder. “How am I supposed to know what stupid shirt you want from one day to the next?”

“It’s more than that and you know it!” snapped the shorter one.

Crowley looked from one to the other, uncertain of how to tackle this best.

“What the hell are you going on about?” the tall one yelled.

Crowley noticed the other shoppers in the mall sneaking past, giving the two angry brothers plenty of space.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know!”

“Know what?!” The taller one waved his arms around in a frustrated manner.

“Oh, come on, you’ve stolen everything I ever wanted since freshman year!”

“ _Lynette?_ This is about _Lynette?_ ”

Crowley looked between them. “Who’s Lynette?”

“Only this idiot’s high school crush,” the taller one said, jabbing forcefully at his brother. “Only she was _my_ girl first!”

“Was not!”

“Was too!”

 “Gentlemen,” Crowley said soothingly, holding his hands out in a placating manner. “So you,” he gestured at the tall one, “got a girlfriend, and you,” he gestured at the shorter one, “liked her before that. Sure. Fine. But how’s that relevant now?”

“Yeah, how is that relevant now?” shouted the taller one with more volume than was absolutely necessary.

“Because you go out of your way to take everything _I_ want!”

“I’m sure that’s not—” began Crowley.

“But _Lynette?_ ” the taller one protested over the demon. “I mean, she ran off with someone else anyway! Neither of us got her!”

“I might have, if _you_ hadn’t broken her heart first!”

“I didn’t break her heart, _she_ broke up with _me!_ I had nothing to do with it!”

The shorter brother laughed, a huge fake laugh designed to make everyone within earshot uncomfortable. “Yeah, _right!_ ”

“Gentlemen,” repeated Crowley calmingly, in an attempt to take control of the situation.

“What?” shouted the tall one, and it took Crowley a moment to realize this was addressed to him.

“But if all this was years ago,” Crowley said, “why is it such a big deal now? I mean, I’m usually encouraging of grudges, but doesn’t this seem a little, um, petty?”

They stared at him.

Finally the taller one looked at his brother. “Yeah, doesn’t this seem a little petty?” he asked accusingly.

“But it’s the point of the issue,” the shorter one said, and Crowley was relieved that they’d at least stopped shouting. “I told you I fancied her, I _trusted_ you with that information, and you went and asked her out anyway.”

“So it’s a matter of trust, then?” Crowley clarified. He broke the bonds of trust between people all the time; how hard could it be to forge them? “So: trust each other.”

“It’s not that easy,” the shorter one said bitterly.

“Why not?” Crowley asked, genuinely confused.

“Because of time, you weirdo. _Time._ It’s been too long. I’ve hated this man all my life,” he gestured at his brother, who was currently adopting a hurt expression, “and I’m not about to stop now because some wacko in a hideous jumper told me to kiss and make up.” His voice was bitter again.

“I’ve got to agree with my sprout of a brother on this one,” the taller one said. “How can I ever trust him again? He’s made my life hell for as long as I can remember. It’s too late to change some things.”

“But, but,” Crowley said, feeling them slipping away. “But I’m _here._ I told you to trust each other. I got you to talk it out. I forgave you.”

“It’s not your forgiveness I want,” said the tall one bitterly and, with one last glare at his brother that would have melted ice, turned and walked away.

The shorter one waited until he was gone, and then turned to Crowley. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but thanks. Now I’m probably never going to see him again. Who needs family anyway? A load of crap if I ever heard it.” He too turned and left, leaving Crowley standing alone in the middle of the shopping mall, feeling he had quite missed something.

 

***

 

Aziraphale took a seat on a park bench on the edge of the road, trying to think of things he’d heard Crowley boast about. Most of them were far too complicated for him to possibly pull off, but it was possible he’d let something easier slip…

Aziraphale stared across the road, and his eye lit upon a small church opposite. He was very fond of churches, for obvious reasons, but it seemed like a place a demon would try to wreak havoc. He approached the edge of the lot carefully. He knew demons weren’t allowed on hallowed ground, but he wasn’t sure if it applied if he was only a demon in body. He was standing on the sidewalk, debating on whether or not to risk it, when a man came out of the church. He was wearing a jumper and his hair was neatly combed and Aziraphale immediately took a liking to him. He could tell he was a priest—it was something all angels could tell—but was also acutely aware that he was currently a demon. He put his head down and turned away as the man came down the walk after locking the church.

The priest stopped on the sidewalk, giving him a sideways glance.

“Hello, friend,” the priest said.

“Er, hi.” Aziraphale said. He wished he were himself—Crowley didn’t have the look of a nice person.

“How are things with you?”

“Fine, fine,” Aziraphale said absentmindedly. All of a sudden he remembered a distant conversation with Crowley, in which he had mentioned how demons tempted priests.

With this sudden flash of intuition, Aziraphale spotted a young woman walking along the sidewalk towards them. With a tilt of his head he transformed her into a stunning creature, short skirt and low neckline and all.

He stood aside to let her pass as she approached, and cast a sly glance at the priest.

"Father,” she said politely as she passed.

“Bless you, child,” the priest said, carefully averting his eyes from her exposed parts.

Once she had passed, the priest turned back to Aziraphale, who let the spell on the woman drop with a frown.

“Tell me, friend, you look troubled. How can I help?”

"Er,” said Aziraphale, unused to being on the receiving end of this kind of conversation. He realized he must look like some sort of delinquent. Removing the sunglasses would probably help, but then the priest might exorcize him and Aziraphale was very uncertain as to the consequences of that, for both him and Crowley.

The angel racked his brains. What would Crowley do?

He thought about the things that he usually saved people from, the things that would tempt this man…the seven deadly sins. Lust was a no-go, so what else did he have in his arsenal?

Aziraphale produced a chocolate bar from his pocket with a small flourish of angel magic and started unwrapping it.

“You know, Father,” Aziraphale said, stalling for time, “my problems are a bit unusual.”

“Nothing is too unusual to be outside the realm of God’s forgiveness, son.”

Aziraphale nodded and broke off a piece of the chocolate bar. “Some chocolate?”

The priest shook his head. “No thanks. Come, walk with me and tell me your troubles.”

Aziraphale was left eating the chocolate bar by himself as they walked.

“I’m afraid I’ve come lately into a great deal of money,” Aziraphale said slowly. “I was thinking of donating some to the church. I could give it to you right now if you wanted.”

“No need, my son. I don’t remember seeing you around for Mass. If you truly want to donate to the church, that’s great, but I wouldn’t want you to feel you had to. Perhaps there is a local charity you think would use the money more wisely; I’ll be the first to admit that the church does its best but it’s not always perfect.”

Aziraphale nodded and stared at the sidewalk. This tempting business was hard.

“Do you feel you work too much?” he asked after a moment. “I mean, going around and helping all those people, don’t you feel you need more time off?”

“Oh, but I love my job. You know what they say, if you love your job you’ll never work a day in your life, and it’s true. Helping people _is_ a joy to me, and I love doing it every day. How do you feel about your job?”

“You know, so-so. You do some good things, you do some bad things. Do what management tells you if you don’t want to endure trials.”

“Endure what?”

“Oh, sorry, I mean, um, get, you know, in the boss’s bad books.”

“Ah.”

 Aziraphale realized this conversation was going in entirely the wrong direction.

“Actually,” he said, returning to his list of deadly sins, “I never really believed. In God and your, er, religion.” He could feel the eyes of Heaven searing into his back. Oh, he was going to get in so much trouble for this. “I think it’s quite silly, all this about apostles and, er, angels and crap. Bugger,” he added to himself. “And I quite hate priests. And that jumper you’re wearing is deplorable.” If that wasn’t going to get a little wrath out of the priest, then nothing would.

The priest was silent for a long time, and then he sighed and stopped. Aziraphale drew to a halt beside him, preparing for the inevitable punch. Instead the priest stepped forward and gave him a long hug. Aziraphale felt something inside him wilt a little.

When he pulled away, the priest was teary-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry you don’t believe, and I’m sorry you don’t like priests much, but I’m glad you came to talk to me. It’s much better to just get it out, you know? Don’t keep it bottled up. The best thing we can do it talk it out; it makes the weight on our shoulders that much more bearable.”

Aziraphale was shocked. He knew several angels who would have given in long before. Maybe Crowley was right about his theory that the truest forms of grace came from humans.

Aziraphale nodded stiffly and they resumed their walk. He was quite losing heart in this whole temptation spiel but wanted to see it through to the end. Their walk took them across the street from another church, this one a large stone cathedral.

The angel nodded over at it. “Do you wish your church was so grand?” he asked. “With so many more people, more funds, more people you can help, don’t you agree?”

“Some would,” the priest replied, “but not me. No, I’m quite content with my little church. The building used to be a center for the homeless, did you know that? And it’s true the congregation isn’t very large, but we’re close-knit. It’s more, I think, a community than three hundred strangers standing in lines in a fancy stone building.” He smiled sadly. “I think my church is quite grand, in its own way.”

Aziraphale’s regard for the priest was growing by the minute. He had one last sin to tempt him with. “So you’re proud of it, then? Your little church, standing up against the others?”

“As proud as a father of his child,” the priest admitted. “Though I wouldn’t go around telling people that. I think its charm is in its obscurity. It’s there if you’re looking for it, but it doesn’t bother you if you’re not. And to be honest I think that’s what a church ought to be.”

Aziraphale stopped again and extended his hand. The priest seemed surprised, but shook it nonetheless. His grip was firm and his eyes were kind. Then Aziraphale said bugger all and gave him a big hug. “Thank you,” he said, the honesty plain in his voice. “Thank you for what you do, you are one of the best men I have ever seen.”

The priest smiled. “Thank you, sir. I hope you drop by the church sometime. Mass is open to all.”

Aziraphale gave him a wide smile. He might not be a very good demon, but this wasn’t a battle he truly wanted to win. “Thank you,” he said again, and then turned to leave.

“God bless you!” the priest called after him.

Aziraphale shook his head as he continued on his way. Maybe Crowley had also been right about some humans being difficult to corrupt, and if he was honest with himself he was glad that he had bumped into one of those.

 

***

 

Crowley walked dejectedly along the edge of the shopping mall, kicking stones. He was passing the narrow gap between two buildings when he heard the soft sob. He stopped and retraced his steps.

Peering into the dark alley, he spotted a figure sitting on the ground, back against the wall, knees tucked up to their chin.

Crowley peered around but no one else was in sight.

He went into the alley.

The figure sniffed when it saw him and moved to stand up, but Crowley held his hands out in an unthreatening manner. As he slid down the wall to sit next to the person, he was grateful he was wearing Aziraphale’s looks. The angel looked harmless, approachable, cuddly, even. If Crowley had walked into that alley looking like himself, he was convinced any sane person on the planet would have run screaming in the opposite direction.

As Crowley settled into a sitting position, he saw his new companion was a teenage girl. Her hair was long and dark and scraggly, and she kept her face down. Her hands were wrapped around her knees and played with a leaf, tucking it between different fingers in turn.

“Hi,” Crowley said, as if she hadn’t noticed his arrival. “I’m Aziraphale.” He didn’t know what made him say it, but it seemed right. He didn’t want to be Crowley right now; he’d had enough of being Crowley for a bit. He was going to forget about being a demon for a little while, and he was going to remember the days, so very long ago, when he had been an angel.

“What sort of a name is that?” she asked, sniffing.

“A very old one.”

“Huh.” She kept her head down. The leaf in her fingers twitched.

“What are you doing back here?” Crowley asked.

She shrugged, and the movement caused her hair to shift. He saw the tip of her nose, and it was red.

Crowley fell silent, unsure what to say. He thought of Aziraphale, and wondered what the angel would say.

“How are you doing?”

She shrugged again, and the leaf twitched faster.

“What’s up with the leaf?”

The leaf stopped moving. “It’s like me,” she said quietly.

“How are you like a leaf?”

“It was beautiful once,” she said softly. The leaf turned in her fingers. “And then it fell.”

“Falling isn’t so bad,” said Crowley quietly. “I Fell once.”

“How?”

Crowley shrugged and looked down at his own hands—Aziraphale’s hands. “In every way imaginable. From grace, from family, from everything I knew.”

She turned her head a little towards him. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know. Didn’t do what Dad wanted. Or maybe did it a little too well.” He frowned. “I don’t even know, really. I just…I was always meant to Fall. A lot like your leaf, actually.”

She was silent, and Crowley stared silently through Aziraphale’s hands, lost in memories an epoch old. “Falling’s not fun. I think you get that. But…it wasn’t as bad for me as it could have been.”

“How do you mean?”

“I had a friend. One really good friend. That’s all you really need, you know. No one else I knew would talk to me after I Fell, and the ones that would talk to me I didn’t want to have anything to do with, you know? But that’s how it was destined to be. Me, Falling.” He gave a short laugh.

In truth, he had only been an angel for a matter of months before he had Fallen, but that didn’t seem to take the sting out of it. All he should have known was Hell, but he’d always been a little too interested in Heaven. Sometimes he wondered if the ineffable plan hadn’t been so ineffable after all, if perhaps he had Fallen incorrectly. Hastur and Ligur and the others—they loved being demons, truly loved it. Even Aziraphale loved being an angel. They were good at what they did, they knew who they were, but he…he was something in between. A member of Hell who remembered Heaven. He’d adapted well, of course, that’s what millennia did to you…but after a certain number of drinks he’d start to remember what it was all like before, and how much he’d loved it.

He didn’t like being a demon, but now that he was an angel he didn’t like that all that much, either. Not with Michael and Gabriel and the lot lording it over everyone upstairs, at least. He wondered if that was why Aziraphale spent so much time on Earth, more than the average angel. If he was honest with himself, Aziraphale was probably the only reason he’d survived Falling without dousing himself in holy water. The transition had been tough, but having someone to lean on had made it that much easier.

“Do you have a good friend?” Crowley asked softly.

She shrugged and sniffed again.

There was a long pause.

“So that’s your leaf, eh?” he asked at last.

She nodded.

“I have a leaf too,” he said.

She glanced over at him.

“And my friend has a leaf. And your friend. And every person you know, and every person I know. Because if you look at a tree, don’t all the leaves fall?”

Her hair twitched, and he thought he might have seen a glimpse of a smile through her hair.

“Everybody falls sometime,” Crowley said quietly. “Some worse than others, but everyone flares and falls. And then everyone finds a way to grow back in the spring.”

She sniffed again.

Crowley stared at Aziraphale’s hands again and decided he’d borrowed them long enough. He stood and dusted himself off.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and he thought he heard a note of regret in her voice.

“To see that friend of mine,” Crowley said. “I think he has something of mine.”

“Thanks,” she said quietly.

Crowley paused and looked down at her. It took him a moment to realize what was different, and then he realized that she’d dropped the leaf.

“You’re welcome,” Crowley said, and realized that it was the first time someone had thanked him for as long as he could remember. “You are very, very welcome.”

 

***

 

Crowley found a nice park bench to lie down on as the sun dipped below the horizon and lay there, savoring his last moments as an angel.

It had been fun, and informative, and enlightening, but he was ready to go back to being a demon now. He missed his Bentley, and his recklessness, and Aziraphale’s dry comments about his wrongdoings. He missed being an angel, but he was a demon now and had to admit he had rather grown to like that too.

Being an angel was definitely more work than he remembered, that was for sure. Hopefully Aziraphale hadn’t ruined his reputation too much back in Hell, or he’d have to go crack a few demonic skulls together to remind them who was in charge.

As he drifted off to sleep, he hoped Aziraphale’s day hadn’t been too exciting, for his own sake.

 

***

 

Aziraphale started into wakefulness. He sat up and glanced around. He was sitting on a park bench on an unfamiliar street. He glanced down at himself, and sighed in relief. He patted himself down just to be sure, so grateful to be back where he belonged. He stretched his wings, their weight and balance familiar and perfect, and felt the edge of his jumper, comfortable and warm. He stood up, hopping up and down briskly to warm himself up in the crisp morning air. He rubbed his hands together and ran his fingers through his hair. Everything seemed to be in order, and Crowley didn’t seem to have left any surprises.

He sighed again, relishing the sheer joy of being an angel. He was a worker of Heaven, an agent of the Lord, and he loved every minute of it. Maybe it had been a little fun playing black sheep and messing with people, but that was demons’ work.

Their little misadventure had served to convince him that the grass was not, indeed, greener on the other side of the fence, and he was grateful he’d learned that. How much more he could appreciate his work knowing that it was the best work to be had!

He remembered Crowley’s admission that he’d insulted Gabriel, and grimaced. He’d have to go apologize and then lie low for a while until someone else insulted the archangel and took the attention off him. It wasn’t difficult to do; Gabriel wasn’t the most tactful of his brothers.

Aziraphale stretched his wings and set off down the road, aiming to visit the priest from the other day. He owed him some sort of apology…or maybe he’d just sit in the back during Mass and spend the whole hour blessing each person in the congregation individually.

He hoped Crowley had found his way back to his own body and was off doing his own nefarious things. It was nice knowing that Crowley was the one going around negating the good he did—it was best, he supposed, to keep everything in balance, and give neither good nor evil the upper hand, and if anyone was going to go around cursing all the people Aziraphale blessed, he wanted it to be Crowley.

Partly this was because Crowley was one of the few demons that didn’t take a sort of sadistic pleasure from the work he did. He didn’t truly enjoy the torturing and scheming, but instead took it in stride as something that came with the job and, well, someone had to do it, and so it might as well be him. But mostly it was because Crowley had been with him at the beginning, and if Aziraphale had any say in it, he wanted it to be the demon with him at the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to comment! I'd love to hear your thoughts. ;)


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